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mariacallous · 3 months

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Next week, leaders from the 32 members of NATO will gather in Washington to celebrate a truly remarkable achievement: the 75th anniversary of the strongest, most enduring alliance in recorded history. That NATO can also celebrate its powerful resurgence since the Russian invasion of Ukraine is a signature achievement of U.S. President Joe Biden. Under his leadership, the alliance has expanded to include two well-armed, strategically savvy new members, Finland and Sweden. On Biden’s watch, the number of NATO states spending 2 percent or more of their GDP on defense has expanded from nine to 23, with several other countries on course to meet this target soon. At the summit, the Biden administration will rightly press allies to think of 2 percent as a floor, not a target.

During Biden’s term, NATO readiness also has expanded dramatically, including more U.S. soldiers deployed to Europe, more NATO troops in the front-line states closest to Russia, and roughly 500,000 alliance soldiers ready for combat in Europe. Plans are well underway in Europe and the United States to vastly expand the alliance’s collective military-industrial base—alleviating not only shortages of key weapons and munitions for Ukraine but making the alliance as a whole better prepared for future threats.

In 2022, Biden led the alliance in responding quickly and comprehensively to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It seems far-fetched now, but it’s useful to remember how many politicians, analysts, and journalists expected Russian forces to be in downtown Kyiv within days. The world also feared that Russian President Vladimir Putin would succeed in deposing or killing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, install a puppet regime, and thereby gain control of all of Ukraine. That none of this happened, that Ukraine was able to liberate about half of the territory initially occupied by Russian forces, and that it has held the line against relentless Russian assaults—all while a direct conflict between NATO and Russia has been avoided—is a remarkable achievement.

As the war has dragged on, the share of military, economic, and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine from European NATO allies has increased dramatically. Under Biden’s watch, trans-Atlantic burden-sharing has become real, not just a talking point: Today, Europe outspends Washington in terms of total support for Ukraine. In fact, Europe is sending much more aid directly to Ukraine, whereas U.S. military spending stays in the United States to build new weapons for the U.S. military, which then transfers its older, often decommissioned weapons to Ukraine.

None of these achievements were inevitable. After the West won the Cold War in the early 1990s, some European and U.S. leaders argued that NATO should be disbanded since its mission was over. Thankfully, that did not happen, as the security threat posed by Russia to NATO members is as high as it ever was during the Cold War—and arguably higher considering that the Cold War was relatively stable in Europe. Similarly, many have argued over the last three decades against NATO expansion. Thankfully, these voices did not carry the day. Imagine how many more countries on Russia’s borders might be at war or under the threat of invasion from Moscow if they were not under NATO’s umbrella.

Imagine if Donald Trump had been president when Putin made the decision to invade Ukraine. Given his past record of praising Putin and being indifferent to Ukraine, Trump most likely would have done nothing to aid Ukraine—throwing Kyiv under the bus, immeasurably strengthening Moscow, and deeply dividing the alliance. Also compare this year’s celebratory and unified summit to the chaotic 2018 version in Brussels, where then-U.S. President Trump threatened to withdraw from the alliance. While berating NATO allies, Trump consistently praised Putin. More recently, Trump said he would “not protect” what he considers free-riding European allies and “would encourage [the Russians] to do whatever the hell they want.”

But even with Biden in the White House, a united and firm NATO response to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was not inevitable. After all, Biden was vice president in 2014, when Russia invaded and annexed Crimea and sent its troops into the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine—the first act in what is now a 10-year Russian invasion. Neither the Obama administration nor other allied governments responded forcefully. Although there were some sanctions and Russia was kicked out of what was then still the G-8, the United States and most NATO countries crucially did not supply weapons to Kyiv. Putin therefore had reason to believe that the U.S. and NATO response would be similarly tepid in 2022. That turned out not to be true, in large part due to Biden’s leadership within the alliance.

Russia’s war is now well into its third year with no end in sight in terms of either a military breakthrough or a negotiated peace. Clearly, Putin is waiting to see if Trump will win the November U.S. presidential election, calculating with good reason that he will get a much better deal under Trump, including U.S. recognition of his illegal annexation of Ukrainian territory. But even if Biden is reelected, the prospects for a complete liberation of Ukraine from Russian occupation are fading. But imagine how much worse it would be for Ukraine today were it not for NATO’s assistance.

At the summit next week, only incremental progress will be made on Ukraine’s accession to NATO. That the summit will therefore only discuss a “bridge” to membership—not an actual invitation—will disappoint Kyiv but also some in Washington and other allied capitals who want membership for Ukraine now. As a compromise, I personally have proposed that NATO issue an invitation to Ukraine now, followed by a long ratification process that would be completed only after the war is over. But right now, that seems a bridge too far for the alliance. Still, members will be taking steps at the summit to institutionalize the NATO-Ukraine relationship, including the creation of a NATO command for Ukraine in Germany and the deployment of a NATO civilian leader to a permanent office in Kyiv. These should be seen as positive steps on the road to membership.

The final step—a formal invitation to membership—should be taken immediately after the war is over. Ukraine’s membership in NATO is the only way to guarantee that Putin will not use a cease-fire or other negotiated break in the war to prepare the next phase of his invasion, just as he did between 2014 and 2022. The bilateral security agreements that Ukraine has signed with several countries are useful but not enough—they do not carry the weight of treaties and can be revoked at any time. Only NATO membership will finally prevent another Russian invasion.

Some analysts say making the end of the war a condition of membership gives Putin an incentive to prolong the conflict to keep Ukraine out of NATO. It’s a legitimate worry but convincing only at first glance. If Ukraine and its supporters stay the course and the war ends with Russian forces pushed out completely, Putin will not have the capacity to keep fighting. But if the war ends with Russia still occupying parts of Ukraine, Putin will trumpet this outcome as a fantastic victory—far more important to him than stopping NATO expansion, which was only a tertiary motivation for invading Ukraine in the first place. After all, not only did Putin refrain from invading Finland when it declared its intention to join the alliance in 2022, but Russia even withdrew many of its troops and weapons stationed near the border for redeployment to Ukraine. If Russia feels safe enough to leave a 830-mile border with a well-armed NATO state virtually undefended, then it clearly does not consider the bloc a threat.

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill once said, “There is only one thing worse than fighting with allies, and that is fighting without them.” Americans learned that lesson in 2001, when U.S. forces fought alongside their NATO allies in Afghanistan, the only instance in the alliance’s history when the Article 5 mutual defense clause was invoked. There is no greater burden than dying for one’s ally, and that is exactly what the United States’ European and Canadian allies did in Afghanistan. Today, U.S. security, prosperity, and values continue to be advanced by a strong NATO—an incomparable U.S. foreign-policy asset that should never be taken for granted. That is cause for celebration—and for the hope that Americans will continue to appreciate leaders who value and nurture allies.

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thelostdreamsthings · 1 year

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Understanding the NATO summit:

The steam for the US proxy war in Ukraine is running out. No commitment is given to Ukraine to obtain NATO membership because the West has come to realize that they can’t win a war against Russia and that peace will only be possible with a neutral Ukraine.

Ukraine will never be a member of NATO. Zelenskyy has realized this and is fuming in Vilnius, attacking NATO as disrespectful and calling the conditions absurd. In a moment of clarity he acknowledged what’s really going on:

"It seems there is no readiness neither to invite Ukraine to NATO nor to make it a member of the Alliance. This means a window of opportunity is being left to bargain Ukraine’s membership in NATO in negotiations with Russia."

That’s exactly right. NATO has lost this war. Biden has lost this war. The lunatic Democrats have lost this war. The uni-party warmongers have lost this war. The EU has lost this war. Ukraine and Zelensky have lost this war.

Russia wins and rightfully so because everything that happened in Ukraine was a fraud against the Ukrainian people perpetrated by a failing US empire in its final stand against a rising multipolar world.

Zelenskyy was never a leader who did what’s best for his people. He will be remembered as a US puppet and actor for foreign interests. 350,000 Ukrainians dead because of him and his puppet masters in the US. He lost $12.7 trillion worth of land and resources to Russia because he did not sign the reasonable peace agreement that Russia had proposed to him. Instead he fell for empty promises from Biden that the US will support Ukraine until victory. What a fool.

The good news is this war may be over soon. The West has lost its appetite to throw more money into the Ukrainian black hole. With the US and EU entering recession they have enough problems at home. Protests and riots will become regular news. Biden wouldn’t stand a chance in the next election. His brain is Swiss cheese and the only alternative for the Democrats is Kennedy.

Trump will use the fatal mistake in Ukraine and the dire economic outlook of the US to run a successful campaign. Kennedy, who says all the right things, would be his only real obstacle but the Democrats have messed their country up so royally that Trump seems like the only choice.

The reality is that it doesn’t matter who the next US president is. The insurmountable debt burden combined with de-dollarization in global trade and the rise of BRICS+ are going to send the US into a decade long depression with unseen levels of poverty and violence.

Hopefully humanity dodged a bullet and nuclear war is no longer imminent. At least that is my read of the situation right now. But things could flare up again if peace negotiations fail. Russia may be tempted to take Odessa and turn Ukraine into rump state without access to the sea. Russia is holding all the cards. Let’s see how Putin plays them.

Putin’s ONLY mistake is not starting the Ukraine special military operation sooner than he did.

Zelensky is not just angry because he's short, has no friends and was rejected by NATO..

He's also angry because Putin currently controls 100,000 sq km of Ukrainian territory.

#ukraine

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meandmybigmouth · 3 months

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'Betrayal': Trump shrugs off McConnell warning and invites authoritarian to Mar-a-Lago

'Betrayal': Trump shrugs off McConnell warning and invites authoritarian to Mar-a-Lago (msn.com)

Donald Trump will host an authoritarian leader in his home one day after Sen. Mitch McConnell warned fellow Republicans to stay away from a European prime minister "parroting Putin’s talking points," reports show.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán intends to meet with the presumptive Republican nominee and convicted felon after a NATO summit in Washington, a Trump campaign spokesperson told the New York Times.

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justinspoliticalcorner · 3 months

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S.V. Dáte at HuffPost:

WASHINGTON ― President Joe Biden on Tuesday praised the NATO alliance at its 75th anniversary celebration as he potentially became the last U.S. president to address the group’s annual summit. Biden told the civilian and military leaders from 32 countries assembled in Washington that the alliance, founded after World War II to keep the peace in Europe and thwart Soviet expansionism, has a new mission in stopping Russian dictator Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

“Today NATO is more powerful than ever ― 32 nations strong,” he said at evening ceremonies at the Andrew Mellon Auditorium, where the founding treaty was signed in 1949, as he welcomed the two newest members, Sweden and Finland. “Our commitment is broad and deep,” he said. “Our nations will continue to keep faith in what we pledged in years to come.” How long the United States will honor that pledge, though, is unclear. Donald Trump, the coup-attempting former president who will become the Republican presidential nominee next week to challenge Biden’s reelection, has long threatened to abandon NATO. According to his own defense secretary, Trump planned to pull out of the alliance in his second term ― a plan foiled by his loss to Biden in the 2020 election.

John Bolton, his former national security adviser, said Trump had wanted to withdraw in his first term and almost did at the summit in 2018. Bolton said Trump never understood how NATO worked and did not care to learn. “He spent four years as president, he didn’t know anything about it when he entered the Oval Office, and he didn’t know anything about it when he left,” Bolton said in an interview earlier this year. [...] Although Biden told the audience that Americans appreciate the work of NATO, it is nevertheless unclear what anyone could to do to stop Trump from unilaterally withdrawing from the treaty if he is elected and chooses to do so, as presidents have sweeping power in international affairs. It is also unclear whether NATO could survive without the United States for the four years of a second Trump presidency ― or longer if he chooses not to leave office at the end of it.

Last night, President Joe Biden (D) addressed the annual NATO Summit, and he could possibly be the last sitting US President to address the organization.

Donald Trump, if he gets elected into office again, would like to pull the US out of NATO, which would be a calamitous disaster and another way to pucker up to Russia.

See Also:

The Guardian: Biden promises new air defenses for Ukraine in forceful Nato speech

#NATO #United States #Joe Biden #Donald Trump #Foreign Policy #Ukraine #Russia #Russian Invasion of Ukraine

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 3 months

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Matt Davies :: Strange love

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

June 20, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

JUN 21, 2024

Yesterday, in North Korea, Russian president Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un signed a security partnership between their countries that said they would “provide mutual assistance in case of aggression.” The two authoritarian leaders essentially resurrected a 1961 agreement between North Korea and the Soviet Union. According to the North Korean News Agency, the agreement also calls for the two countries to work together toward a “just and multipolar new world order.”

The United States and other western allies have been concerned for two years about the strengthening ties between the two countries. Putin needs weapons for the war in Ukraine, and in exchange, he might provide not only the economic support Kim Jong Un needs—North Korea is one of the poorest countries in Asia—but also transfer the technology North Korea needs to develop nuclear weapons.

In the New York Times today, David Sanger pointed out that Putin and China’s leader Xi Jinping have partnered against the West in the past decade but have always agreed that North Korea must not be able to develop a nuclear weapon. Now, it appears, Putin is desperate enough for munitions that he is willing to provide the technologies North Korea needs to obtain one, along with missiles to deliver it.

Meanwhile, Joby Warrick reported yesterday in the Washington Post that Iran has launched big expansions of two key nuclear enrichment plants, and leaders of the country’s nuclear program have begun to say they could build a nuclear weapon quickly if asked to do so. On X, security analyst Jon Wolfsthal recalled the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) that successfully limited Iran’s nuclear program and that Trump abandoned with vows to produce something better. Wolfsthal noted that diplomacy worked when “wars and ‘promises’ of a better deal could not.”

Still, the meeting between Putin and Kim Jong Un is a sign of weakness, not strength. As The Telegraph pointed out, just ten years ago, Putin was welcomed to the G8 (now the G7) by the leaders of the richest countries in the world. “Now he has to go cap in hand to the pariah state of North Korea,” it pointed out. National Security Communications Advisor John Kirby added that “Russia is absolutely isolated on the world stage. They’ve been forced to rely, again, on countries like North Korea and Iran. Meanwhile…, Ukraine just organized a successful peace summit in Switzerland that had more than 100 countries and organizations sign up to support President Zelenskyy’s vision for a just peace.”

In that same press conference, Kirby noted that the U.S. is delaying planned deliveries of foreign military sales to other countries, particularly of air defense missiles, sending the weapons to Ukraine instead. Also today, the U.S. emphasized that Ukraine can use American-supplied weapons to hit Russian forces in Russia. This is at least partly in response to recent reports that Russia is pulverizing Ukrainian front-line cities to force inhabitants to abandon them. Ukraine can slow the barrage by hitting the Russian airstrips from which the planes are coming.

China, which declared a “no limits” partnership with Russia in February 2022 just before Russia invaded Ukraine, kept distant from the new agreement between Russia and North Korea. Tong Zhao of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace told Laurie Chen and Josh Smith of Reuters: "China is…careful not to create the perception of a de facto alliance among Beijing, Moscow, and Pyongyang, as this will not be helpful for China to maintain practical cooperation with key Western countries.”

Greg Torode, Gerry Doyle, and Laurie Chen published an exclusive story in Reuters tonight, reporting that in March, for the first time in five years, delegates from the U.S. and China resumed semi-official talks about nuclear arms, although official talks have stalled.

The office of president of the Republic of Korea (ROK), Yoon Suk Yeol, condemned the agreement. “It’s absurd that two parties with a history of launching wars of invasion—the Korean War and the war in Ukraine—are now vowing mutual military cooperation on the premise of a preemptive attack by the international community that will never happen,” it said. An ROK national security official added that the government, which has provided humanitarian aid to Ukraine, will now consider supplying weapons. This is no small threat: ROK is one of the world’s top ten arms exporters.

In the U.S., John Kirby told reporters that while cooperation between Russia and North Korea is a concern, the U.S. has been strengthening and bolstering alliances and partnerships throughout the Indo-Pacific region since President Joe Biden took office. It brokered the historic trilateral agreement between the Republic of Korea, Japan, and the United States; launched AUKUS, the trilateral security partnership between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the U.S.; and expanded cooperation with the Philippines.

On Tuesday, at a joint press conference with U.S. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken in Washington, D.C., NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg explained the cooperation between Russia and North Korea like this. “Russia’s war in Ukraine is…propped up by China, North Korea, and Iran,” he said. “They want to see the United States fail. They want to see NATO fail. If they succeed in Ukraine, it will make us more vulnerable and the world more dangerous.

To that, The Bulwark today added journalist Anne Applebaum’s comments about the determination of those countries to disrupt liberal democracies. Dictators, she said, “are betting that Trump will be the person who destroys the United States, whether he makes it ungovernable, whether he assaults the institutions so that they no longer function, whether he creates so much division and chaos that the U.S. can’t have a foreign policy anymore. That’s what they want, and that’s what they’re hoping he will do.”

Trump himself is a more and more problematic candidate. This week, author Ramin Setoodeh, who has a new book coming out soon about Trump’s transformation from failed businessman to reality TV star on the way to the presidency, has told reporters that Trump has “severe memory issues” adding that “he couldn’t remember things, he couldn’t even remember me.”

Trump is supposed to participate in a debate with President Biden on June 27, and while Biden is preparing as candidates traditionally do, with policy reviews and practice, Trump’s team has been downplaying Trump’s need for preparation, saying that his rallies and interviews with friendly media are enough.

With new polls showing Biden overtaking the lead in the presidential contest, right-wing media has been pushing so-called cheap fakes: videos that don’t use AI but misrepresent what happened by deceptively cutting the film or the shot.

Social media has been flooded with images of Biden appearing to bend over for no apparent reason at a D-Day commemoration; the clip cuts off both the chair behind him and that everyone else was sitting down, too. Another, from the recent G7 summit, appears to show the president wandering away from a group of leaders during a skydiving demonstration; in fact, he was walking toward and speaking to a parachute jumper who had just landed but was off camera. A third appears to show Biden unable to say the name of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas; in fact, he was teasing Mayorkas, and the film cuts off just before Biden says his name.

On Monday, June 17, Judd Legum of Popular information produced a deep report on how the right-wing Sinclair Broadcast Group has been flooding its local media websites with these and other stories suggesting that President Biden is “mentally unfit for office.” Legum noted that these stories appeared simultaneously on at least 86 local news websites Sinclair owns.

Finally, today, in the New York Times, Charlie Savage and Alan Feuer reported that two of Judge Aileen Cannon’s more experienced colleagues on Florida’s federal bench—including the chief judge, a George W. Bush appointee—urged her to hand off the case of Trump’s retention of classified documents to someone else when it was assigned to her. They noted that she was inexperienced, having been appointed by Trump only very late in his term, and that taking the case would look bad since she had previously been rebuked by a conservative appeals court after helping Trump in the criminal investigation that led to the indictment.

She refused to pass the assignment to someone else.

Trump’s lawyers’ approach to the case has been to try to delay it until after the election. Judge Cannon’s decisions appear to have made that strategy succeed.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#Matt Davies #Letters From An American #Heather Cox Richardson #Russian #Putin #North Korea #nukes #nuclear weapons #Foreign policy #election 2024

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dzthenerd490 · 3 months

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News Post

Palestine

Israel’s war on Gaza updates: 25 killed in Gaza today, including infant | Israel-Palestine conflict News | Al Jazeera

From Okinawa to Palestine: How the US military machine connects occupied territories | Middle East Eye

Framing Palestine | Transnational Institute (tni.org)

Ukraine

Ukraine Peace Summit: World leaders meet in Switzerland, Russia absent | AP News

Trump threatens to cut US aid to Ukraine quickly if reelected – POLITICO

Vladimir Putin lays out terms for Ukraine ceasefire (bbc.com)

Sudan

Sudan ethnic cleansinSudan war: Hundreds of towns and villages burned downg (nbcnews.com)

Sudan war: Is Darfur on the brink of another genocide and will the world act this time? | CNN

Sudan’s army repels major assault on el-Fasher; kills RSF commander | Conflict News | Al Jazeera

#Palestine #Gaza #Ukraine #Sudan #Dafur #El Fasher #News Post #World News #world politics #global news #international politics

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bbnewsin125 · 26 days

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#BreakingAlertIn a new book, former President Donald Trump calls his 2018 summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki “a GREAT meeting” and threatens to imprison Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg if the tech mogul does anything this year akin to his $400 million donation to local election offices in 2020.#breakingnews #news #international #bbn #bbnewsinternational #corp #bulletinews #dailynews #worldnews #trendingnews #newsoftheday #newsupdates #newsmedia #newsdaily #newsroom #internationaleditor www.bbnewsin.com

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tomorrowusa · 3 months

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Authoritarian despots show love for each other by committing war crimes.

You'll probably encounter Russian bots claiming that it was a Ukrainian missile that hit the hospital. Be sure to post this fact check by the BBC to keep anybody from believing Putin's idiotic lies.

BBC Verify looks at evidence linking Russia to Kyiv hospital strike

Like his apprentice Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin considers himself to be a genius – and he doesn't let reality get in the way of his beliefs.

You have to be an absolute moron to bomb a Ukrainian hospital during a NATO summit. Whatever aid they had already planned to give Ukraine will now certainly be increased.

Putin knows he can't win the war so he's just gratuitously bombing Ukrainian civilians. We should give Ukraine whatever weapons it wants (except nukes) and let them push Putin out of Ukraine forever.

Condemnation Of Russia Mounts As Ukraine Counts Toll Of Attack On Children's Hospital

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stele3 · 1 year

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#destiel daily digest

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judithbutlersdealer · 3 months

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obviously biden has been off the ball but calling zelensky "president putin" and harris "vice-president trump" at the fucking nato summit of all places is veep level shit. i love old people and i think that we are going through a worrying pattern of infantilizing and disenfranchising intelligent and capable and experienced people due to their age but COME ON. dude needs to be in a retirement home on a lake somewhere before he makes like commander and starts biting the secret service. this is not a man who will be capably dealing with a geopolitical emergency this is a man who will drop the call and then real putin will nuke us

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maaarine · 2 years

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Bibliography: articles posted on this blog in 2023

Posted in January

To grasp how serotonin works on the brain, look to the gut (James M Shine, Psyche, Jan 03 2023)

Thousands of records shattered in historic winter warm spell in Europe (Ian Livingston, The Washington Post, Jan 02 2023)

“Il faut que tu sois belle maintenant” : en Égypte, des femmes libérées du voile restent prisonnières des diktats (Aliaa Talaat, Al-Manassa via Courrier International, 20 nov 2022)

Mystery of why Roman buildings have survived so long has been unraveled, scientists say (Katie Hunt, CNN, Jan 06 2023)

Colombia’s surrogacy market: Buying a baby for $4,000 (Lucía Franco, El País, Jan 04 2023)

How to spot an eating disorder (Phillip Aouad & Sarah Maguire, Psyche, Jan 11 2023)

UAE sparks furious backlash by appointing Abu Dhabi oil chief as president of COP28 climate summit (Sam Meredith, CNBC, Jan 12 2023)

Don’t tell me that David Carrick’s crimes were ‘unbelievable’. The problem is victims aren’t believed (Marina Hyde, The Guardian, Jan 17 2023)

Baromètre Sexisme 2023 : "La situation est alarmante", estime le Haut Conseil à l'Égalité (Juliette Geay, Radio France, 23 janvier 2023)

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Posted in February

Spain approves menstrual leave, teen abortion and trans laws (NPR, Feb 16 2023)

Are Men the Overlooked Reason for the Fertility Decline? (Jessica Grose, The New York Times, Feb 15 2023)

American teenage girls are experiencing high levels of emotional distress. Why? (Moira Donegan, The Guardian, Feb 16 2023)

Figures that lay bare the shocking scale of toxic influencer Andrew Tate’s reach among young men (Maya Oppenheim, The Independent, Feb 17 2023)

Why psychological research on child sex offenders is important (Meetali Devgun, Psyche, Feb 22 2023)

Derrière les chiffres des féminicides, des visages et un continuum de violences contre les femmes (Fanny Declercq, Le Soir, 27 fév 2023)

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Posted in March

English is not normal (John McWhorter, Aeon, Nov 13 2015)

Are Iranian schoolgirls being poisoned by toxic gas? (BBC News, March 03 2023)

‘Why do we need a supermodel?’: Backlash after Fifa makes Adriana Lima Women’s World Cup ambassador (Henry Belot, The Guardian, March 02 2023)

New Human Metabolism Research Upends Conventional Wisdom about How We Burn Calories (Herman Pontzer, Scientific American, Jan 01 2023)

Polish woman found guilty of aiding an abortion in landmark trial (Harriet Barber, The Telegraph, March 14 2023)

How Diet Builds Better Bones: Surprising Findings on Vitamin D, Coffee, and More (Claudia Wallis, Scientific American, Jan 01 2023)

Met police found to be institutionally racist, misogynistic and homophobic (Vikram Dodd, The Guardian, March 21 2023)

Chinese Dating App Does the Swiping for Singles to Find Love (Nikki Main, Gizmodo, March 21 2023)

Aphantasia can be a gift to philosophers and critics like me (Mette Leonard Høeg, Psyche, March 20 2023)

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Posted in April

Facts Don’t Change Minds – Social Networks, Group Dialogue, and Stories Do (Anne Toomey, The LSE Impact Blog, Jan 24 2023)

Uganda’s failure to jail child rapists as teen pregnancies soar (Tamasin Ford, BBC News, April 17 2023)

Italy risks ‘ethnic replacement’ because of low birth rate and high immigration, says minister (Nick Squires, The Telegraph, April 19 2023)

Putin, Trump, Ukraine: how Timothy Snyder became the leading interpreter of our dark times (Robert P Baird, The Guardian, March 30 2023)

India overtakes China to become world’s most populous country (Hannah Ellis-Petersen, The Guardian, April 24 2023)

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Posted in May

Des crèches ferment toutes les semaines, « et ce n’est pas près de s’arrêter » (Le Soir, 5 mai 2023)

People in comas showed ‘conscious-like’ brain activity as they died, study says (Hannah Devlin, The Guardian, May 01 2023)

Chinese woman appeals in battle for right to freeze her eggs (The Guardian, May 09 2023)

Women CEOs: Why companies in crisis hire minorities - and then fire them (The Guardian, DG McCullough, Aug 08 2014)

Glass cliffs: firms appoint female executives in times of crisis as a signal of change to investors (Max Reinwald and Johannes Zaia and Florian Kunze, LSE Business Review, Aug 19 2022)

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Posted in June

Afghan women in mental health crisis over bleak future (Yogita Limaye, BBC News, June 05 2023)

Support Of Amber Heard Alongside French Feminists & Cinema Figures (Melanie Goodfellow, Deadline, June 05 2023)

Why is Japan redefining rape? (Tessa Wong & Sakiko Shiraishi, BBC News, June 07 2023)

Catching the men who sell subway groping videos (Zhaoyin Feng & Aliaume Leroy & Shanshan Chen, BBC News, June 08 2023)

Netherlands to provide free sun cream to tackle record skin cancer levels (Kate Connolly, The Guardian, June 12 2023)

The Cause of Depression Is Probably Not What You Think (Joanna Thompson, Quanta Magazine, Jan 26 2023)

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Posted in July

‘Farsighted impulsivity’ and the new psychology of self-control (Adam Bulley, Psyche, Feb 03 2021)

Can a perfectionist personality put you at risk of migraines? (Shayla Love, Psyche, July 25 2023)

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Posted in August

How Loneliness Reshapes the Brain (Marta Zaraska, Quanta Magazine, Feb 28 2023)

Why religious belief provides a real buffer against suicide risk (David H Rosmarin, Psyche, Aug 07 2023)

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Posted in September

What Are Dreams For? (Amanda Gefter, The New Yorker, Aug 31 2023)

Rape Cases Seize Italy’s Attention and Expose Cultural Rifts (Gaia Pianigiani, The New York Times, Sep 03 2023)

Councils in England in crisis as Birmingham ‘declares itself bankrupt’ (Heather Stewart and Jessica Murray, The Guardian, Sep 05 2023)

Nearly one in three female NHS surgeons have been sexually assaulted, survey suggests (Jamie Grierson, The Guardian, Sep 12 2023)

Domination and Objectification: Men’s Motivation for Dominance Over Women Affects Their Tendency to Sexually Objectify Women (Orly Bareket and Nurit Shnabel, Sep 09 2019)

In Spain, dozens of girls are reporting AI-generated nude photos of them being circulated at school: ‘My heart skipped a beat’ (Manuel Viejo, El País, Sep 18 2023)

When the human tendency to detect patterns goes too far (Shayla Love, Psyche, Sep 19 2023)

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Posted in October

My Brain Doesn’t Picture Things (Marco Giancotti, Nautilus, Oct 04 2023)

“Inverse vaccine” shows potential to treat multiple sclerosis and other autoimmune diseases (Sarah C.P. Williams, The University of Chicago, Sep 11 2023)

Poland election: exit polls point to Law and Justice defeat as Tusk hails ‘rebirth’ (Shaun Walker, The Guardian, Oct 16 2023)

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Posted in November

What I have learned from my suicidal patients (Gavin Francis, The Guardian, Nov 22 2019)

Did natural selection make the Dutch the tallest people on the planet? (Martin Enserink, Science, Apr 07 2015)

Tumblr Is Always Dying (Elizabeth Minkel, Wired, Nov 14 2023)

How accurate is the new Napoleon film? Sorting fact from fiction (Andrew Roberts, The Sunday Times, Nov 19 2023)

Far-right party set to win most seats in Dutch elections, exit polls show (Jon Henley and Pjotr Sauer and Senay Boztas, The Guardian, Nov 22 2023)

Climate change: Rise in Google searches around ‘anxiety’ (Lucy Gilder, BBC, Nov 22 2023)

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Posted in December

The sexual assault of sleeping women: the hidden, horrifying rape crisis in our bedrooms (Anna Moore, The Guardian, June 15 2021)

Afghanistan: Taliban sends abused women to prison - UN (Nicholas Yong, BBC News, Dec 15 2023)

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mariacallous · 3 months

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NATO has safeguarded U.S. and trans-Atlantic security for 75 years, under Democratic and Republican presidents alike. Could NATO survive a second Donald Trump administration? Most likely not—at least not with the United States as a committed ally and alliance leader. That would pose serious challenges for the European part of the alliance.

Trump’s skepticism about NATO

Trump’s skepticism of allies and alliances dates back well more than three decades. He believes they impose an outsized budgetary burden on the United States, for which it is not “paid.” Further, he believes allies use their defense savings to bolster their industries, out-compete the United States in trade, and take American jobs.

Trump’s views seemed to change little when he assumed the responsibilities of the presidency. At his first NATO meeting in 2017, he complained that allies did not devote 2% of their gross domestic product to defense, a goal NATO leaders had set as a target to meet by 2024 (more than two-thirds of allies will hit that target this year). At a 2018 alliance summit, Trump reportedly asked Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Advisor John Bolton: “Should we make history here and pull out of NATO?”

Trump did not endorse Article 5 of NATO’s 1949 Washington Treaty, also known as the North Atlantic Treaty, which states that an attack against one “shall be considered an attack against them all.” Reaffirming Article 5 is something American presidents ritualistically do, in part because Article 5 does not commit allies to a specific action. However, American presidents other than Trump made clear the United States would come to the aid of an attacked ally with U.S. military force. That bolsters deterrence.

Trump has signaled something very different. In February, he told a campaign rally that he had warned allies that, if they did not pay up, he would “absolutely not” defend them, adding “I would encourage [the Russians] to do whatever the hell they want.”

Trump does not appear to share other presidents’ view that the United States has a vital national interest in a stable and secure Europe, which NATO helps to ensure. Further, bases in Europe allow the U.S. military to forward-deploy forces closer to hot spots in the Middle East and Africa (United States Africa Command, for example, is headquartered in Germany). And NATO has invoked Article 5 only once in its history: in defense of the United States after 9/11. More than 1,000 NATO troops died in Afghanistan fighting alongside their American comrades. They were there only because they were U.S. allies.

On the other hand, Trump seems to have an affinity for autocrats, and for Russian President Vladimir Putin in particular. He has rarely criticized Putin, whose war on Ukraine has blown up Europe’s security.

The fact that the Trump administration nevertheless bolstered the U.S. military presence in Europe and increased sanctions on Russia should offer little assurances. As president, Trump showed a weak grasp of how the U.S. government works and of how to turn his views into policy. Moreover, advisors such as retired generals John Kelly (White House chief of staff), H.R. McMaster (national security advisor), and Jim Mattis (secretary of defense) worked to soften his worst impulses.

Policy and players in a second Trump administration

Things would almost certainly play out differently in a second term in which Trump’s instinctive skepticism about NATO, affinity for Putin, and disdain for Ukraine would take charge. His campaign website says the United States should “finish the process we began under my Administration of fundamentally reevaluating NATO’s purpose and NATO’s mission.” That is oddly timed when Moscow has launched the bloodiest war in Europe since World War II, and NATO is as important as ever for deterring and containing Russia.

Plans have been developed to translate Trump’s views into policy. The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 section on Europe offers three visions for dealing with Russia1, two of which would appear to lessen the U.S. commitment to NATO, and leaves it to the president to decide. Trump almost certainly would choose one of those two.

A briefing paper that reportedly got attention in Trump’s inner circle argued that the United States should adopt a “dormant NATO” policy. That would mean shifting the primary defense burden to European allies while America served as an offshore “balancer of last resort.” That diminution of the U.S. role in NATO appears to mesh well with Trump’s thinking.

Lists are being prepared of potential officials to implement those policies. The lists will not include the likes of Kelly, McMaster, and Mattis, but people such as Richard Grenell and Elbridge Colby. Grenell, who served as Trump’s ambassador to Germany, has been described as transactional and isolationist; in 2020, he pushed for a drawdown of U.S. troops in Germany because the Germans had not met the 2% defense spending target, a target that NATO had agreed should be met by 2024 (and which Germany hit this year). Colby argues for a China-first policy that would leave little room for the U.S. commitment to NATO.

Moreover, today’s Republican Party is no longer the party of Ronald Reagan and John McCain. While some Republican senators and members of Congress support a strong U.S. presence in NATO, few have shown any readiness to challenge Trump, who has firmly locked down his position as GOP leader. In fact, quite the opposite. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has consistently supported NATO and Ukraine, recently penned an op-ed entitled “We Cannot Repeat the Mistakes of the 1930s.” However, he has endorsed Trump, whose America First views echo precisely those mistakes. In any case, McConnell will step down from his leadership position in November.

Bolton has flatly predicted: “In a second Trump term, we’d almost certainly withdraw from NATO.” The 2024 National Defense Authorization Act includes a provision requiring two-thirds Senate approval for a decision to leave NATO. However, it is not clear that would survive a legal challenge. Even if Trump did not formally withdraw, he could draw down U.S. forces in Europe and, if it came to it, simply ignore Article 5.

Views of NATO allies in Europe

Allied leaders already have reason to doubt Trump’s commitment to the alliance. If Trump wins in November and Putin shares that doubt, the security risk for Europe would grow significantly.

NATO leaders understandably view the prospect of Trump’s return with trepidation and privately talk of “Trump-proofing” the alliance while considering ways to persuade the former president of NATO’s value. That trepidation is a factor that has helped boost defense spending by European NATO members—as a way to demonstrate that Europe is taking on a greater share of the burden but also as a hedge against a Trump decision to downgrade the U.S. commitment to the alliance. Some European officials have reached out to Trump; those efforts have not had an evident effect.

Were Trump to win in November and then reduce the U.S. commitment, a number of challenges would confront European NATO members. First, Ukraine. Trump recently reiterated that he would end U.S. support. That would mean a greater financial burden on Europe, but Europe alone lacks the defense industrial capacity to meet Ukraine’s needs, at least in the near term.

Second, Russia. NATO’s European members collectively have an economy many times larger than Russia’s. They would need time, however, to turn that into hard military power and would face a particular struggle making up for enablers now provided by the U.S. military, such as intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance assets; heavy airlift; and long-range strike capabilities such as conventionally-armed air- and sea-launched cruise missiles.

Third, the nuclear dimension. Were Trump to fold the nuclear umbrella the United States extends over NATO, could the nuclear forces of Britain and France suffice to protect all European members of the alliance? The possible end of the American extended deterrent has even prompted a discussion in Berlin about a German need for nuclear arms.

Fourth, NATO leadership on major questions traditionally has come from Washington. If the United States under Trump were to withdraw, as Bolton predicted, or just dramatically cut back its role, who would take up the leadership mantle?

European members of the alliance must further build their militaries and continue to take on a greater share of the defense burden for Europe, particularly as the United States has to deal with a rising China in the Indo-Pacific region. That shift is already well underway: non-U.S. members of NATO (European members plus Canada) accounted for about 27% of total NATO member defense spending in 2014; in 2024, that figure had risen to about 36%. The problem is that even that kind of increase likely would not prove enough for Trump—who has suggested that allies devote 4% of GDP to defense—and that, if reelected, he would move abruptly to scale back the U.S. role in the alliance. NATO absent a strong U.S. commitment in a second Trump administration would be a very different—and considerably weaker—organization.

There is a small chance that Trump, who often seems uninterested in specific policies, might leave NATO alone. Even in that event, however, could Europe count on the mercurial and unpredictable former president when the chips were down? It would not appear to be a good bet.

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theculturedmarxist · 1 year

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Let’s start with a silly fear but one that does signal the Democratic Party’s growing sense of panic about the 2024 Presidential election. It was expressed to me by someone with excellent party credentials: that Trump could be the Republican nominee and will select Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as his running mate. The strange duo will then sweep to a huge victory over a stumbling Joe Biden, and also take down many of the party’s House and Senate candidates.

As for real signs of acute Democratic anxiety: Joe Biden got what he needed before the NATO summit this week by somehow turning Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan inside out and getting him to rebuff Vladimir Putin by announcing that he would support NATO membership for Sweden. The public story for Biden’s face-saving coup was talk about agreeing to sell American F-16 fighter bombers to Turkey.

I have been told a different, secret story about Erdogan’s turnabout: Biden promised that a much-needed $11-13 billion line of credit would be extended to Turkey by the International Monetary Fund. “Biden had to have a victory and Turkey is in acute financial stress,” an official with direct knowledge of the transaction told me. Turkey lost 100,000 people in the earthquake last February, and has four million buildings to rebuild. “What could be better than Erdogan”—under Biden's tutelage, the official asked, “finally having seen the light and realizing he is better off with NATO and Western Europe?” Reporters were told, according to the New York Times, that Biden called Erdogan while flying to Europe on Sunday. Biden’s coup, the Times reported, would enable him to say that Putin got “exactly what he did not want: an expanded, more direct NATO alliance.” There was no mention of bribery.

A June analysis by Brad W. Setser of the Council on Foreign Relations, “Turkey’s Increasing Balance Sheet Risks,” said it all in the first two sentences—Erdogan won re-election and “now has to find a way to avoid what appears to be an imminent financial crisis.” The critical fact, Setser writes, is that Turkey “is on the edge of truly running out of usable foreign exchange reserves—and facing a choice between selling its gold, an avoidable default, or swallowing the bitter pill of a complete policy reversal and possibly an IMF program.”

Another key element of the complicated economic issues facing Turkey is that Turkey’s banks have lent so much money to the nation’s central bank that “they cannot honor their domestic dollar deposits, should Turks ever ask for the funds back.” The irony for Russia, and a reason for much anger in the Kremlin, Setser notes, is the rumor that Putin has been providing Russian gas to Erdogan on credit, and not demanding that the state gas importer pay up. Putin’s largesse has been flowing as Ergodan has been selling drones to Ukraine for use in its war against Russia. Turkey has also permitted Ukraine to ship its crops through the Black Sea.

All of this European political and economic double dealing was done openly and in plain sight. Duplicity comes much differently in the United States.

#biden #erdogan #turkey #ukraine #2024 presidential election #economics

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